Be My Distraction
by AnnHoj
Summary: “If you change your mind, you know where I’ll be…” She spoke with a hopeful smile before she turned to walk away from him.' --Ron is crumbling to bits in front of her eyes after Fred's funeral, and no book she has ever read has prepared her for this.


So I wrote this a while ago, right after I finished the seventh book. It just took me awhile to get it inot posting condition. It's my first HP fic, so please go lightly on me! I own nothing, JK does. Trust me, if I owned any portion of Ronald Weasley, well, I'd be a far happier girl, now wouldn't I?   
Do enjoy. Reviews are very much welcome...hint-hint wink-wink

_

* * *

_

"The death of someone we know always reminds us that we are still alive - perhaps for some purpose which we ought to re-examine." -Mignon McLaughlin 

The last time he had seen so many flowers surrounding him had been months ago at Bill and Fleur's wedding, a happy occasion, the marking of a new start to a new life for two people together. This occasion, however, the sweet smell that floated through the air was a mere mask of the constant reminder of death, the loss, and the end of life for others. The colors inhabiting the Burrow had changed from pure white and pastels to sorrowful black and shades of grey. The tears that fell were prompted out of pain and mourning rather than of joy or merriment. There was no celebration to be had this time around. The lighthearted air that had been so appealing of the summers that had been previously spent at the Burrow had since dissipated and was substituted with something far heavier. There was one less Weasley in the world and nothing was the same any more.

The only thing that was consistent with the way things had always been was the amount of food set upon the table. Molly Weasley had taken the large number of people at her house as an opportunity to end world hunger, or at least for those within the boundaries of the family's kitchen and dining room. There were fancy cobblers and pies, and chicken and mashed potatoes, among many others spread out across the table, extended for the excess of people. It was as if Mrs. Weasley had taken to the cooking as away to push everything else from her mind. Rather than taking five minutes to fix things the way she normally would have, she instead slaved away over a stove the muggle way. Despite her attempts, it appeared as if, despite the abundance of food, everyone had misplaced their appetites somewhere throughout the day. The guests; family, friends, and other members of the order, sat around the table, taking enough to be polite, only picked at it with their forks as they sat in near silence, apart from the soft hum of select people conversing to only those closest to them.

Ron sat in absolute silence, not even bothering to even attempt to pick at the peas on his plate, to make it seem like he was appreciating his mother's culinary efforts. Instead, he stared at them blankly, not an understandable thought on his mind, until his eyes crossed themselves due to a lack of interest. The green beads scattered on his plate had morphed into an expressionist painting when they blended with his untouched potatoes. The people around him, their faces, their voices; everything was a blur, more of a blur than even his potatoes had become. They were all muffled, like he was underwater and the liquid in his ears skewed all sound. He had felt like he was submerged ever since he had left Hogwarts, except instead of swimming freely as one would normally do during their summer, he felt like he was near drowning and he couldn't tread the current for much longer.

"Ron, what's wrong?" Hermione asked genuinely as she approached the spot where his crumpled form sat at the base of the apple tree in the Weasley's backyard which he had claimed as his own. He hadn't moved or articulated any sort of sound by the time she found herself standing over him. She knew that he had realized her presence, but had consciously elected not to acknowledge it. "Ron…"

He lifted his head slightly just to look at her before he decided to speak. "What's wrong?" He chose to repeat her words in an exasperated tone, his face contorted with a mix of emotions simmering underneath the surface. "Let's see…this afternoon I had to help bury my brother. I suppose that has something to do with it." He spat out, each word dripping with more sarcasm than the one previously released.

The smile that she wore outside in hope that it would make a difference finally fell. "You know what I mean…dinner; you walked out in the middle of dinner. I wanted to make sure you were okay…"

Hermione had always been a clever girl. She always knew what to say or what to do in even the most dangerous situations. She could pull the perfect charm out of thin air even when met face to face with one of Voldemort's henchmen, but stand her in front of a grieving Ronald Weasley and her mind drew nothing but a large blank.

"Do you know how many times I've been asked if I was okay?" He didn't mean for her to answer. "Well, I was. I was okay…about seven years ago. I am not okay, nor am I going to be okay anytime soon. So until then, why can't people just leave me the bloody hell alone!" He evaded her eyes like those of a giant basilisk and instead buried his face in his hands, the only thing visible to him being a few blades of grass through the spaces between his fingers. He half expected to be immediately scolded for his choice of words as she normally did to him, but instead he was greeted with momentary silence.

At the funeral earlier that day he had appeared fine. Of course he had been completely silent, in fact she doubted that he had said anything to her that hadn't been absolutely necessary until an hour prior to dinner, and nothing in great amount either. He had simply sat between Hermione and Percy silent and stone faced from what she suspected to be the surreal shock of reality that had been brought about by the whole unbelievable situation. At one point he had grabbed her hand on impulse in the middle of service when it was particularly difficult for him and gave her fingers a squeeze to release what little energy he had left in him. Other than that, it was as if he had been working on auto pilot, going through the routine of things but not doing anything 'normal' wholeheartedly.

"We worry, we care, that's why we ask, Ron…" Regardless of his obvious want for her to just go back inside and let him deal with it all alone, she took up residence upon the plot of grass at his side. "I understand; I know how you're feeling…"

"No Hermione, no. You haven't a clue..." He shouted at her as soon as the feeling behind it flooded his mind. "You know what it's like to see your brother attacked for pure entertainment? Or how it felt to know that I was completely helpless to stop everything? Or how I had to abandon him to save my own skin, and just hope that someone on our side would find him and bring his body home in one piece?" She could feel the fire in his eyes as they bore straight into her own. Strangely enough, the anger hadn't found itself extinguished yet by the glistening tears he had held back in pools that lined his lower eyelashes, nor the few failed attempts that trailed down to his jaw line, slightly scruffy now, where they faded away in to shadow.

"No, okay. No, I don't know…but I'm trying, aren't I?" Her voice began harsh and defensive, but faded to something lighter, something more like what for which he was looking. "I'm here, right here, and I want to help you more than you could possibly imagine, but I need you to tell me how to do that." She reached out a hand to toward his face, though badly bruised and beaten both of them still were, to wipe away the tear he let slip, but he turned away from her before she got a chance.

"Why Fred, you know…Why did he have to die? For us; to save us?" She could hear his voice waver as he tried to liberate each word. There was such fear, sadness, and vulnerability simply spilling out of the gingered haired man sitting with her. She had never seen him, in all the years she'd known him as a boy from school, allow himself really cry in front of her. Yet in the first year she knew him as a young man, seventeen and of age, he had been broken down to his elements right there before her eyes.

Hermione, though not exactly the typical girl, still couldn't help but feel the tears well up in her own eyes as she watched closely his future ones floating in his of bright blue. "'Mione, not you too…" A ghost of his lopsided grin spread across his sullen face, but she knew it was more prompted out of frustration and desperation than anything else. "I've seen far too many people cry lately. I mean, my mom…my dad; my parents…crying. We're not supposed to see that stuff. They're supposed to always have it all together and make it look easy; make it seem like someday when we're their age things will actually be like that for once. Then something like this happens and it just shatters everything we thought we knew. Any of us could go tomorrow and not expect a thing."

She had to admit, she hadn't expected that, but over the last few months she had learned not to expect anything. "But now, because of what Fred helped us do, we don't have to worry, your family doesn't have to hide, none of us have to live in fear all because of him, Lupin and Tonks. It's horrible, but I have a feeling that fighting for something they believe so strongly in, if given a choice…" She was grasping at straws certainly, but that didn't mean, however, that she didn't believe what she was saying.

"But he was nineteen, two years older than either of us! Do you not get it? My parents had to bury their son today. There's just something wrong with that.!" Just when she thought that his disposition had changed permanently, she could sense, again, the pain, the fury in his intonation just at the thought the difficult truth.

"Well if you're so worried about your parents and how they're doing, why are you sitting out here instead of in there with them?" She didn't mean to sound so accusing, but in her attempt to be helpful it had simply slipped out as such.

His furrowed brow and how his jaw dropped enough to part a space between his lips exhibited the sense of shock he felt at her complete misunderstanding. "I just can't take it anymore!" His shaking hand was forced nervously through his fiery red hair for a lack of anything more useful to do with this pent up energy. "I can't stand to see everyone like this. I don't know how to deal with it all, Hermione! I need…I just need to be…"

"Alone?" She offered up the word she knew he was struggling to make audible. It was only obvious as he did walk out the door with the idea that there would be far less people picnicking in his backyard than there was of family and friends crowded around the Weasley dinner table and the hope that people would know enough to give him a little time to call his own. He wasn't figuring to find himself at Hermione's side, which he should have. They had made it through the first few stages of this mess together, so why would he expect that she would leave him to clean up the aftermath completely alone.

His response was nothing more than a slight nod, but he knew, or at least hoped that somewhere in there Hermione was far clever enough to find a way to understand his him. His face, although forced into a permanent frown, fell farther as the warmth of the girl next to him drifted away from where it previously rested against his bare left arm. He had really pushed her away this time, but of course this hadn't been the first by any means. He was about to return his face into the palms of his hands when her voice welcomed itself to his ears too soon.

"If you change your mind…you know where I'll be…" She spoke with a hopeful smile before she turned to walk away from him.

He had pushed her away so many times in the past and the second he thought he might have pulled her back for good, he went and did it all over again. He had worried throughout their whole unlikely mission whether he'd be able to look to one side of him or the other and know that she was there perfectly alive and unharmed at the finish. He feared the idea of seeing her not there with him, but lying lifelessly beside Lupin, Tonks, Severus, and his own brother.

But there they were with the rest of the free world at their feet. All he wanted to do was wrap his arms around her a little tighter, breathe in her scent, and taste her lips against his own again until he was forced to let her go for, hopefully, only a short amount of time. He didn't want to turn her away, but he simply could not stand to have her see him in the dismantled condition in which he had found himself. Ever since they all had left Hogwarts for the Burrow hadn't had a moment strictly to himself. Even when he was asleep there was Harry across the room. He needed a chance to purge himself of all scatterbrained emotion bottled up inside him. He could let however many tears he wished to release cascade down his freckled cheeks; he could throw things, or rid himself of his anger by screaming at the top of his lungs if he bloody well pleased. Well, the screaming had to be kept at a minimum because it would only attract attention from more than just Hermione and would bring a premature end to his Ron-only time, his time completely free of questions or further judgments. Then as soon as he felt he was through, he would traipse back in the house as a person just as mentally stable as everyone else. It was a fool proof plan. He could do this and he would by his own means.

She had so many questions floating through her mind as of lately. Where did they stand? Were they still friends? Were they something in the dangerous middle between that and far more? Or were they just two people who never could decide because their opinions of each other depended upon which way the wind was blowing when they woke up in the morning? She had made the first move, the big move. But her move had been one without the use of words. Therefore he didn't know exactly how she felt about him, though she figured somewhere along the way he'd grasped the gist of it.

It was more his end of the situation that produced the most questions for her however. When she kissed him, there was no denying that he had put in his own effort and prolonged the event longer than she had expected. She could still remember how soft his lips felt when they melted with hers. It stood out to her at the time because it was something unexpected. They had been many months on the run, battling the occasional death eater, escaping dungeons, and dealing with dragons. It's not as if they were unscathed through it all. She also thought, regardless of how the girl annoyed her, she had to admit that Lavender had trained him well.

People thrown in to difficult situations were known to do things that, given normal circumstances, they wouldn't dare think of doing. It was that thought that worried her the most. In fact, it was partially responsible for her own altered judgment. It looked to be the certain end of the world, or at least how they had always known it. It had the power to mess with people's heads. It threw in the sharp reality that pushing things off until tomorrow would do you no good when tomorrow could be stolen right out from underneath you.

Was this Ron's excuse too? Was kissing her simply something he hadn't tried before and thus surrounded by death suddenly became more appealing to him? She knew Ron, quite well actually, and she doubted whether he would do anything unless he actually meant it. But she also knew that he did the same with Lavender, although in a sickeningly more frequent number, and that never really meant anything of real importance to him. Her friendship with Ronald Weasley had never once gotten close to this point before. It was foreign territory and therefore absolutely terrifying. She wanted answers, but now was simply not the time to bombard the kid with her inferior worries.

The night was drawing on later at a speed faster than one would have thought to be correct. The stark white of the ceiling in Ginny's room had become too familiar to her as she had found herself searching its surface from her bed below. There was no need for her to rise exceptionally early the next morning, yet the great lack of good sleep that she had suffered for who knows how long told her that such contemplation could, for once, be put off until tomorrow. Sleep took top priority.

She had only been asleep for a quarter hour when a loud creek in the old floor boards throughout the otherwise silent room pulled her back into consciousness. Cautiously, she pushed herself up to sit, wanting to grab her wand out of instinct, and propped her back against the wall, to discover the sound's origin to be a tall freckle-faced boy who had been robbed of the top half of his pajamas by the muggy summer nights at the Burrow. She half wondered whether he had been sleepwalking as his mouth had remained quiet since he crossed through the doorway and continued towards her. She sensed the one side of the bed dip slightly with the added weight as he perched on the edge.

"I was wrong…" He offered up with a grin illuminated only by the moonlight filtering in through the old home-sewn curtains in the window over her nightstand.

Hermione remained silent herself, though shifted over and pulled the covers back to allow him to inhabit the space she had made along side her. He did so hesitantly, lying down with a distinguished distance left between them. Uncomfortable keeping a ridged frame, he continued to reposition his lanky frame closer. She could feel his toned arms; clever side affects of Quiddich keeping, envelope her in a snug embrace as he molded himself around her thin form. He shivered slightly against her as her chilly bare feet met with his much warmer ones. She just smiled and nestled her nose into the crook of his neck, brushing her lips against the soft skin she found there.

"Imagine that…Ronald Weasley was wrong…" When she whispered softly in his ear he could feel the hair on the back of his neck stand up. "How strange?" What had he gotten himself into?

"I'm sorry. I know you were just trying to help." He apologized as she settled herself in, her head resting upon his chest.

"Couldn't sleep?" Hermione assumed as she glanced up at his tired and worn face and the dark shadows that had materialized since she had last seen him.

"Yeah, my mind just…needed a distraction." He tried his best to describe just what had drawn him like a moth to the flame right to Hermione's side. In the last few months he had grown accustom to sleeping next to her, whether it was nights at Grimmauld Place sleeping on the floor or how she would crawl up to his top bunk after Harry had taken over her look out shift. He hadn't realized it at the time how much peace of mind she had brought him at the time, but he sure as hell dreaded the end of Harry's shift when he'd have to abandon her warmth for the cold air awaiting him outside the tent. He just wasn't used to sleeping without her.

He drew unconscious circles with his fingertips upon her bare arm that draped across his stomach as he searched his mind for exactly what words he wished to remember at the moment. "You know when you have so many emotions flowing through you at one time that you feel like you could explode…" She recognized the phrasing instantly as soon as he began. "It's not as impossible as I thought." He laughed, though held back its volume to keep it between the two of them rather than continuing to travel across to where Ginny still slept.

That too had been a thought among many to cross his mind. He wondered how reactions would go when his little sister woke earlier than him the next morning, or even worse, what his mother would have to say. Oh, he could only imagine. However, at this point he simply didn't care and he only hoped that she'd be slightly sympathetic. He could feel the warmth emanating from Hermione's form to his until a certain equilibrium was met between them. Regardless of everything going on, he had found such serenity where he currently laid.

Hermione was his escape. Over the years she had helped save him and Harry more times than he was willing to count. Why hadn't it clicked sooner that in any crisis she would be the person who held the power to mend all of it, if only for a moment? He wanted to deal with things on his own time by his own efforts. But through his failed attempts, it had occurred to him how the loss and the abandonment he felt from the death of his brother should have brought him closer to those around him, not be the reason for pushing them away. Avoiding everyone he cared about was a waste of time, and considering the conditions of Fred's death, time had become a precious commodity. It was continually slipping from between his fingers until it ran out, hopefully later than it had for Fred.

It didn't make everything right with the world again. It didn't bring his brother back and it most certainly didn't make him suddenly at peace with the fact that his own brother had been slayed in his presence. In fact, he highly doubted that he'd ever be able to shake that image from his memory, but he did know, however, that he needed, not immediately but eventually, to move on. He was still alive and she was alive along with the rest of his family and friends. They were better in numbers than he had honestly expected from the very beginning.

"If anyone was to die, I thought it would have been me…" He said as if it had just popped into his head that moment, though he chose to watch the ceiling rather than her as he spoke. He would have bet money actually, what little he had to his name, that if anyone was to meet death face to face far earlier than seemed fit, it would have been him. Sure he of the three of them was in just as much danger as the other two, except that Harry had a far higher price for motive put upon his head. Regardless, Hermione was far more intelligent than he was, and Harry was far braver and far more experienced than Ron thought of himself. He was just the sidekick trying his best to stay alive.

Perhaps that was why he had been affected so greatly by the event. He felt that it should have been himself, not his brother that had been buried today. He felt responsible for it all. It had been the three of them to whom Dumbledore had given this mission. Lupin and Tonks, and even Fred were more qualified than Ron. They knew what they were doing, unlike himself, whom often felt as if he was running around blind with occasional lucky bursts of brilliant ideas. They all died, each just beginning a new life, in order to help and protect him. He felt as if it was a waste. Teddy had been orphaned to save just another Weasley. He didn't feel worth all the loss. Had Ron not been involved with it, he thought somehow that at least Fred would still be alive today, had he just stayed out of it, but he just couldn't. He had abandoned them long enough somewhere in the middle, doing so for the whole journey was deemed possible.

"You can't do that to yourself. None of this was your fault." Where her hand lay against his chest she could feel his heart beat at an increased rate, most likely prompted by how worked up he had become lost in thought during the silence that had floated between them.

"I'm not saying that I avada kedavra-ed him, but he wouldn't have been there had it not been for us. He wasn't an auror, he was a businessman. He didn't need to be there, he didn't need to die."

"No one _needed_ to die, Ron…except for you-know—_Voldemort_…" She had grown so accustomed to fearing the use of his name, feeling as if she'd be bombarded with a room full of people who would want them all dead then and now. Even though he had been defeated, she still felt compelled to avoid it. "Things just happen. People die unexpectedly. All we have left to do afterwards is remember the good his life brought, what his death stood for, and stop blaming ourselves for things beyond our control."

The distraction that he wished to have found there with her hadn't worked as flawlessly as she had imagined he had wanted. He was irrational, but then again she hadn't lost anyone close to her other than Dumbledore and he wasn't a relative by any means. "Ron, you need your sleep…" She knew that this very thing had been what had kept him from it for so long because she knew that if the mere thought of taking her O.W.Ls had kept her unable to get a good night's sleep for weeks, the stress of something like this was more than enough to cause the same affect. She wanted to help him, especially now that he had allowed her near him and handed her the opportunity to do so, but she found herself, for once, so inexperienced. All of her knowledge that she had gained from books over the years couldn't help her now. What she needed wasn't something that you could read up on in a textbook. In fact, she couldn't figure out why he had opened up to her of all people. If he wanted someone to understand him, why hadn't he talked to Harry? His life was full of death and how to deal with it. He knew the full extent of all that the three of them had to battle as of lately, but she knew that, in Ron's mind, he thought that Harry's problems were far more important than poor Weasley's worries. Harry had stared death in the face and came back again. He had been willing to die for all of them, to save them. Ron didn't want to go whining to the one person who had far more problems. She took it as a compliment that he had chose her in which to confide, she simply wished she had a little more help to offer.

All she could really do know was stay with him, at his side, to lay with him in silence. Her words hadn't accomplished much and she figured that if he really wanted to talk about something specific he would without her having to pull the words from him. He seemed quite content just as they were. She could feel his chest under her rise and fall in sync with her own softer breathing as she closed her eyes only for a moment to take in a deeper breath of his scent. It was nothing special and nothing intentional; a simple mix of soap and his natural Ron-ness. That was one thing she liked about him, he wasn't one who fussed too much about himself. He differed from Viktor in the way that everything about him was effortless, the way his ginger hair fell every which way around his head and in his eyes, how, if she wished, she could play connect the dots with the constellations of freckles scattered across his shoulders, or how his smile always seemed to come out crooked no matter how hard he tried. Ron was completely oblivious to everything. Viktor tried too hard and it just wasn't the same. Not to mention that Ron was her best friend and had been ever since their first encounter with a mountain troll. They had been through everything together and all of that combined over seven years was only bound to bring them to this point…whatever the name for that point was supposed to be.

"Hermione?" He rolled over on his side to face her, though displacing her from her comfortable resting spot in the process. Despite how he loved the feeling of just being close to her, he had to distance himself slightly in order to speak to her directly, rather than aiming his words at the ceiling hoping that gravity would pull them down to meet her ears. "What are we doing? Where are we?" He grasped for her answer desperately.

She decided against giving him the literal answers of 'trying to sleep' and 'Ginny's bedroom' because she knew exactly about what he was talking. It was the same type of questions that had been floating their way through her thoughts unwanted. "Well, what do you want us to be? Still friends…or more?"

" 'Mione, I don't think friends is the right word to use anymore…" It wasn't a definite answer, but that of course was what she got for answering his question with another one.

"I know how I feel and I know you know that, but I don't know about you…" She thought that if she trailed off he'd be more likely to jump in and save her from rambling.

"You're actually questioning how I feel about you? Have you gone daft?" He pulled her closer to him as he began to laugh. "I thought it was pretty obvious, Hermione. I love you. I thought you knew that." He rested his forehead against hers as he lied to face her. His eyes searched her face, her lightly blushed cheeks, her supple small lips bend into a smile, until he rested his gaze upon her eyes searching in his for something honest.

"Well, I was the one who kissed you…so how was I supposed to know exactly?"

Her words he found far too ridiculous to not interrupt. "You know, maybe I'm a little rusty if you didn't get anything out of that…" His tone had drawn lighter as the subject switched to something that normally wouldn't be so relaxing of a conversation, but given the alternative, flowed from him so organically.

"Well it was a confusing time, so how the heck was I supposed to be absolutely sure of anything?" She felt her stomach perform flips as he watched intently as her lips formed each word. She had spent so much time thinking about it that she suspected it would be far easier than that to explain fully to him.

He didn't seem to care about any lengthy excuse to her uncertainty of the whole branching relationship between them. "Actually, I still could use a little more practice. It's been a while…" He pulled her body flush with his own and nervously bit his lip as he looked towards her as if trying to figure if she would move next or if he'd have to do it. It was a game with them, one they'd been playing for four years, if not five. One of them would make, not a whole move towards the other, but hints and half-moves hoping that the other would meet them somewhere in the middle. They had been playing their own messed up game of wizard chess, until Hermione had thrown him all off kilter by putting forth the first undeniable move towards him, and he was lost.

This time, however, he didn't wait for her to make up her mind for more than that second. He felt his hand float away from his side as if controlled under some kind of spell to caress her cheek before he pressed his lips passionately against hers. He pulled away suddenly only to recapture her lips with his in a teasing manner. He could feel the smile spread across her lips as they pressed themselves against his. His fingertips followed along her jaw line until they found themselves tangled amidst a head full of curls. His breath found itself caught in his throat as he felt her hands slip from where they had previously rested upon his shoulders around his neck to flat and on fire against his bare chest.

Before he realized, however, she had used the action to force a distance between them. When he felt her lips part from his, he couldn't help but try to follow them, magnetized, as she pulled away from him. Once he knew it was a lost cause, he allowed his pale eyelashes to flutter open to reunite with her gaze. "What's the matter?" He sensed that something was wrong or he had done something wrong by her. "I'm sorry…" He apologized, but for what he was unaware of as of yet, mostly out of the nerves that were escalating with in him.

"Ron, no…it's not…" It wasn't as if she really wanted to put a definite end to things, she didn't really know what she wanted, but simply that she felt compelled to do it. Ron, at this point, was damaged goods. He had gone to her for comfort, for consolation, and for a distraction, not for more problems than he had already. Neither of them, she knew full well, were completely comfortable with this new idea of the two of them officially, and she wasn't about to push it when Ron was in such a different frame of mind.

"No…I understand…" He pressed a quick peck upon her forehead before he laid his head back on his pillow. "Aren't you tired yet?" He toyed with her hand that lay lazily against the cool sheets, teasing the spaces between her fingers with movement until he let them rest intertwined with hers. "It's got to be, what…two in the morning?"

She didn't respond to him in words, or at least any that were audible to him. She scooted closer to where he laid his back flat against the worn mattress and made herself at home in the crook of his arm. She shifted slightly toward him as she brought her hand linked with his to rest upon her chest. "Goodnight…" She spoke with a smile on her lips, although her eyes closed.

"Night, love…" He whispered in consideration that she had already half drifted off toward certain sleep. He shut his eyes to the rest of the quiet room and allowed himself to be lulled to sleep by her gentle breath flowing in and out in a rhythmic fashion at his side as she always was.

To just be alone…what a crazy idea he had conjured up. He wasn't okay, at least not yet, but as he laid there, Hermione asleep in his arms, he knew that with moments like that his hope of one day being okay again had been restored in him. He had the rest of his life free from fear to spend however he wished, and thanks to her he had realized that being riddled with unnecessary guilt was a waste of his precious quickly ticking away time. He was prepared to make every moment of it.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Ronald Bilius Weasley!" He awoke with a start at the sound of a furious middle aged woman with fiery red hair, he assumed by the rarely used three names he had been granted by her at his birth. He opened his eyes only to snap them shut a moment later from the blinding morning sun. He forced them to stay open, shielded by his hand, out of fear of his mother if it appeared to her that she was being ignored.

He realized then why the eagerness had been so prevalent in his mother's voice. He looked around the room to see that it had to be late in the morning. Ginny had already gotten up, made her bed on the other side of the room, and gone downstairs for breakfast hours ago. He hadn't realized the big deal of him being in a room other than his own until he glanced down to find brown curls spread across the pillow next to him and the girl wearing her summer pajamas to which they belonged curled around him. He swore quietly to himself for the predicament he was in both to not wake Hermione and to keep his mother from adding that to his list of offenses. He tried to carefully yet quickly remove himself from the whole sticky situation as his mum stood impatiently in front of him waiting for him to do just that.

"Mum…I know what you're thinking…" He began his careful explanation to eat up time while he worked his way away from Hermione without disturbing her from her sleep. "Well, actually…I have no idea what you could be thinking…" She had snaked her arm around his torso as far as she could with her left arm, now riddled with goose bumps. "I just couldn't sleep…so I came in here to talk to her…and I just…" His next feat involved Hermione's leg draped over one of his own to rest somewhere between his knees, though unless Mrs. Weasley had discovered a spell to see through bed sheets, it couldn't get him in any further trouble.

"Get down stairs in five minutes if you want any breakfast…" She told him with a change of heart. Before he had gotten out of bed, she had left through the doorway and headed down the hallway. He didn't bother to attempt to get up anymore and instead let his head fall back on to his pillow with a sigh. At that point he had forgotten about the girl in shallow slumber next to him.

"Who was that?" She propped herself up on her elbows once she woke up to see him sprawled out beside her, his hands resting underneath his head upon his pillow, awake as well. She pushed herself up with one arm to leave a quick peck upon his flushed cheek. That was how she knew something wasn't quite right. His cheeks and the tips of his ears on occasions functioned as an indication of his mood. There was a certain shade for anger, one for nerves, and one for mere embarrassment. She found it one of her favorite things about him, especially considering that she had the power above about anyone to turn him all three shades from pale pink to a red as brilliant as his hair, but she knew that she wasn't completely the cause this time.

"Um…yeah…" He laughed hesitantly. "My mum was just in here…" He figured that he didn't really need to say anything further her assumption of his mother's assumptions would be correct. "We'll have to fight for breakfast leftovers…"

"I am so sorry…" She spoke slowly as she realized still how close the proximity of their bodies to each other. She moved over slightly even though it didn't make a difference anymore. She felt slightly embarrassed, actually, quite a bit embarrassed, as this was Mrs. Weasley they we're talking about, and despite the fact she knew that she had been previously well liked by the woman, she was afraid that had slightly changed this morning.

"Actually, she didn't seem angry…more like surprised…" He tried to explain, but it was far too early and he was far too confused himself.

"Yeah, that's because we've all been waiting so long for you two to get a clue…" They both snapped their gaze from each other up to where they found Ginny standing in the doorway with a glass of orange juice. "Come on…I saved you some pancakes, but I don't know how long the charm will keep them from George and Harry…"

No sooner had Ginny disappeared from the doorway in the same manner as her mother, Ron jumped up from the bed and got all the way to the borderline of the room and the hall before he realized he had left Hermione behind. He turned around with a furrowed brow. "Pancakes? Come on!"

Hermione felt a smirk appear on her face as she watched him meander back over to her side of the bed and throw the covers off of her demandingly. She forced her eyes shut and pretended as if she had suddenly drifted off to sleep again. What she wanted more than anything was to just drift back to pleasant dreams, the first she had had in some time, mostly likely prompted by Ron.

Though Ron took it more as a personal challenge than anything else. He scooped his arms around her waist and hoisted her up and out of bed, surprisingly to her as she was unaware he had acquired such strength. He planted her bare feet upon the floor boards but left his arms entwined around her. "Man…you need to eat something. You're like a twig…a thin twiggish…twig." His arms felt as if they had much less of her between them, like she had been wasting away to nothing throughout their journey.

The way he toyed with the delicate hem of her shirt as they simply stood there, she knew approximately what events were scurrying through Ron's mind whether he wanted them to be there or not. The way his fingertips felt to her as they accidentally brushed the fair skin at her hip made those same thoughts apparated into her own mind that second.

He laced his fingers with hers and went in to steal a quick peck of her soft lips. Before he could pull her closer and take things any further, a little voice, make that a loud growl, reverberated from Hermione's lean stomach and stopped him in his tracks.

"We were going to breakfast, remember…" Her breath felt warm against his cheek, which didn't help him much.

"Right…pancakes!" With that, and a slight scream from Hermione, he scooped her up in his arms like a sack of potatoes and headed out the door.


End file.
